mondosapore

If this is Tuesday it must be Friuli

I'm leaving today for Veneto, Friuli and Campania.  To see the landscape in an advanced state of spring and to see how the vines are budding.  To taste and re-taste the wines at Aquila del Torre, I Clivi and Dall'Abaco Fedrigoni in the North and various of Fortunato Sebastiano's clients from the South.

I won't have my laptop with me because Internet access is so spotty, and Wi-Fi is all but impossible to find outside of major towns.  But I will post on my trusty BlackBerry, with pictures to be added after my return. 

A presto!

Pure as the driven soot

No, ladies and gents, the Brunello scandal isn't going away, no matter how much some people wish they could "disappear it" and the people who won't let the thing go. 

Yesterday I asked Andrea Gori what was going on over there.  I mentioned that we were still getting aftershocks but the Big One seemed to have ended.  I wondered if a kind of Tuscan omertà was stalling the necessary cleaning of Montalcino's Augean stables.

That's a big 10-4, good buddy.

Andrea wrote:

"People there are saying things were a lot better before the scandal broke.  They're just trying to forget it.  So while the bottles of Frescobaldi, Antinori and Banfi have been impounded (and the magistrates oppose this impoundment), the other producers are moving ahead.  They've got this idea in their heads, that if everybody in Italy did like them, 99% of DOC wines would be disqualified.  [So...what? me worry?]

"So it suits everyone to say that 'nothing' happened at Montalcino.  Mamma mia...

"I don't know what else to tell you except that for now there's a general sense of condoning it."

No one wants to rock the money boat, of course.  It doesn't matter that one of the proudest appellations in Italy has been besmirched.  There's a widespread feeling of So?  Everybody does it.

Which sticks in my craw because of the money the big guys make from Brunello.  Money schmucks like us fork over for a highly rated bottle. (NB: Who reviews this stuff??)  And because I know some small producers whose wines are honestly, beautifully made.  They'll suffer, too, till the stables are shoveled, swept and scrubbed clean.

Andrea also sent me yesterday morning's post from Franco Ziliani.  Franco, as some of you may know, is a fine writer and a sometimes too zealous prosecutor for the truth.  (He can be rather

Pink season

The afternoon sun is streaming in even though the shades are drawn.  It's brutal in this apartment from April till Septmber.  The ordinary sounds of the city -- especially the crazed pack of dogs escorted by one especially crazed dog walker, the bald nut who lives on 53rd Street -- have a new hum today, the humming of a hundred helicopters (not that many but I liked the alliteration) that fly in place, guarding the Pope.  Yes, Benedict is in New York.  Traffic will be an utter mess tomorrow, God bless him.

I sit in this warm light and wonder what wine will His Holiness drink tonight?  A luscious Riesling from his homeland?  A heart-healthy red from Madiran?  A dry, mineraly rosato from Tuscany? 

Ah, rosé.  The problem of rosé perplexes me.  So many Italian producers make one.  I tell them, "Well...I'm not so sure.  It's too seasonal.  It sits on the shelves.  I know it's getting bigger here but in America..."  Shrug.

I've sort of believed that.  Mostly, it's just that I can't work up a lot of enthusiasm for the pink stuff. 

My partner in wine misadventures, Jeff, told me today that a retailer friend in New Jersey has quite another take on rosé.  It's finally catching on.  The dry kind, not the sort of icky sticky stuff that used to prevail.  "People want something that goes with a lot of different kinds of food.  Something clean that doesn't interfere with what they're eating.  And it's a year-round thing." 

I'm happy to be proven wrong.  If the long-promoted pink-wine trend has finally begun to gain traction, fine.  I might buy more than a bottle of it a year.  Maybe I'll go wild and buy half-a-case for summertime meals.  But something about rosé makes me feel dissatisfied with myself. 

It's like when you're breaking up with someone.  "It isn't you.  It's me.  You deserve someone better than me."
Translation: "I am sooooo out of your league."

Know what I mean?

Does anyone else have a policy statement on rosé?  Or is it really me??

And, to arc cleverly back to the beginning, what would the Pope drink if they didn't make him drink Zinfandel or something?

 

Appointment in Genoa, June 16

Filippo Ronco, the young wine-web entrepreneur, has organized the fourth Terroir Vino show, which will be held this year on June 16 in the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa.  The one-day event is highly regarded for the quality of the wineries selected -- which are often small aziende that have no other important forum to introduce themselves to the trade, the press or the public.  The wineries are selected by a tasting panel and, as noted on the TigullioVino web site, this selection rewards winemakers and wines that, beyond their high quality level and excellent quality-price ratio, have also managed to impart a strong emotion, and the respect of their grape varieties or their terroir. In other words not necessarily or not only "trendy wines"  or "top flight wines", but rather wines that deserve attention for their quality, originality and ease of drinking.

A good philosophy for the winelover who is at once adventurous and practical. 

At last year's event in Rapallo there were about 90 wineries on hand (a number from southern France), plus some producers of excellent olive oils and various foods.  It was a wonderful place to meet "new" winemakers and people in the business, not to mention passionate amateurs of wine. 

Check out the TigullioVino site for information about Terroir Vino in English:  click here.

Worst wine retailer?

What makes a wine retailer a bad one?  Which one or ones do you specifically find "bad," however you may define that term here?

I would like to know.  And maybe you would like to vent.

I'll give you an example based on my experiences with a fairly well-known wine store on the Upper East Side.  The sales people are rude, condescending, aggressively push whatever junk they've overbought and handle delivery and billing problems with all the grace of Talibanis at a bar mitzvah. 

What's your choice for worst or, to put a positive spin on it, least favorite wine store?  What do they do that gripes you?  What word of advice would you give them?

My plans for Mark Penn

Yes, Mr. Penn called me as I was flying from Venice to New York.  As I mentioned in a previous postlet, he left an overly cheery voice message.  I called him the next day -- that would be Wednesday, April 9 -- and told him to come to my place on Thursday late in the day. 

He arrived at 5PM on the button.  He entered laughing, full of bonhomie and nonchalance and as Gallically debonair as on overweight, unemployed man d'un certain age with a comb-over can be.

"Here I am, Thomas, back a lot sooner than I thought I might be!"  He guffawed in a Falstaffian way.  I bade him site in exactly the same spot as before.  The cleaning lady had just plumped up all the pillows, so his hemorrhoids were lucky. 

I was cool.  Very different from last time.  I think I was overeager then.  Unlike politicians and Britney Spears, I learn from my mistakes. "Thanks for coming over, Mark -- you don't mind if I call you Mark, do you? I feel like we know each other so well."

"Indeed!  Please call me Mark!  All my friends do.  And my wife!"  A beat.  "And Hillary!" 

No laugh from me.  Let his flop sweat begin.  We were here to talk strategy, tactics. And a low low price.

Vinitaly: My 15 seconds of fame!

My 15 seconds of fame in fact.  Luciano Pignataro of Il Mattino contacted me before I left New York, asking if I would like to be interviewed in his paper, the major daily of the southern mainland (in Naples).  I said yes, and the exciting results and my authoritative comments on vino italiano are at this location. 

I value Luciano'a attention because he really is the most knowledgeable and probably the most discerning writer on southern Italian wine and food today.  His web site is an awesome resource, some of it in English.

Thanks to a very heavy schedule introducing Jeff to a number of small but excellent producers (those unknown gems I'm so fond of), I haven't had any time to hang with a large number of both American and Italian friends.  How much "hanging" there might be is debatable anyway, since everyone is wildly busy.

Last night we had dinner with a young (very young) producer of Valpolicella named Tommaso Bianchi, and his entire family and that essential person, his enologo.  These young guys are doing some fantastic things, and their base Val is to me a perfect expression of that wine: loaded with cherries, light, well-balanced and clean clean clean.  The name of the winery is Dall'Abaco Federgoni, which has a long and interesting history as an estate if not a winery, which in its current incarnation is not very old.  However, most of the vines producing today are at least 20 years old.  I'll save the full story till much later. 

I must add, however, that Tommaso's parents and brother are charming, smart and warmly welcoming.  Ken signaled to me that it was getting late (after an early and tiring day).  "No it's not," I said.  "Yes it is," he said.  "It's one o'clock."  We got back to the B&B near two and asleep around three.  And up at seven. 

The cliche time flies when you're having fun was never more appropriate.  By the way, Tommaso's lovely mother, Silvia, is a "solar" personality as they say here, chic and lovely, not to mention a great cook.  I was fascinated to learn more about the history of the estate, back to Roman times at least, and to hear some of the homey details of Silvia's family, as if the mid 19th century were a couple of years ago.  (OK, I was smitten.)

I must also add that Massimo, the enologo, is a young man who favors a fairly restrained style of Amarone  and has a wonderful touch with the basic Valpolicella.  He's really at the start of his career, and I fervently hope that he and Tommaso maintain a long partnership.

I got to the fair today very late -- at 2:30 -- because we spent a wonderful morning with Lucia Raimondi of Villa Monteleone, whose Valpolicellas are of a more traditional, austere style than Tommaso Bianchi's.  Her ripasso, named San Vito, is her best wine according to three visiting Americans.  It's also her personal favorite.  I've written about it before.  I should say more about Villa Monteleone and its storia sentimentale, which is quite moving and romantic.  The story illustrates the importance the wine holds for Lucia and her family, and explains her commitment to holding high standards.   

Tomorrow will be our last day here in Verona.  We want to explore the wines of Sardinia and then head for Villa Favorita and VinNatur in the afternoon. 

We head for the Venice airport hotel (what a glamorous destination!) on Monday and to New York on Tuesday morning.  Oh grand!  More jetlag!

BTW, sorry for no pix.  I can't download  them on the VI computers.  Plus, you know, I've been schlepping the camera around but have yet to take one picture.  Jeff's been a far far better Vinitaly citizen than I.

Will the truth ever be told?

According to the "official story," the truth has been told in the unfolding saga of the Brunello brouhaha. 

I quote extensively from Vinowire, the joint just-the-facts-ma'am project of Jeremy Parzen and Franco Ziliani:

Montalcino producers are not suspected of using Apulian wine in the production of Brunello, said the Siena prosecutor’s office on Friday.

... Siena prosecutor Nino Calabrese issued the following statement Friday to WineNews.it.

“I am abstemious,” said Calabrese. “I do not read newspapers. I prefer literature and I do not issue statements to the press.... There is no truth, however, to what has been reported by certain members of the media [Ziliani] regarding the use of wines from the region of Apulia in the production of Brunello.”

According the the website, the statement was issued exclusively to WineNews.it.

First of all, Nino sounds like a pompous ass.  Secondly, he sounds like a mighty disingenuous one.  I'd go so far as to say "bullshit artist," which is itself a gentler way of saying "liar", but you know my sense of propriety.

As I and several commenters on mondosapore have already remarked, it's a time-honored practice to goose the wines of cooler and, more to the point, smaller and more prestigious regions with juice from the sunny south.  The shocking thing about this scandal seems to be the large percentage of producers who have been engaging in it in Brunelloland.  A Sienese sommelier that I know through blogging has told given me a long list of big names of the likely suspects, and one of the Frescobaldis was recently arrested for this very transgression. 

I was chatting over wine at Blue Ribbon Bar last evening -- a terrific little place at the corner of Carmine and Downing Streets in the West Village -- with none other than Dr. Parzen himself.  We traded some off-the-record tales of those parts, and he professed his astonishment that no one else in the States was reporting on it or at least discussing it.  Even the Italian papers, no models of journalistic adventurousness, are starting to bring more to light.  It does look like it's going to have legs, this story. 

By the way, Jeremy and I had some delicious snacks and several glasses of Thierry Puzelat's Pineau D'Aunis.  Lovely juice imported by Louis/Dressner.

Penance for Alice

I awoke this afternoon to a firestorm of email abuse.  Friends and strangers alike upbraided me -- yes, upbraided me -- for kidding around at Alice Feiring's expense in yesterday's post.  In my "alternative history of modern wine" I posited a what-if scenario in which everything that characterizes wine today, especially the highly touted stuff that costs a fortune, is turned upside down.  Instead of Parker's being the Emperor of Wine I made an unnamed but obviously-Alice Alice the Wine Czarina.  I framed it all with the opening line and closing line of 1984.  All in good satirical fun.  I even pulled my punches so as not to paint her as a sort of Mark Squires in skirt.  Given the outcry, I shouldn't have bothered. 

The cover of Alice's soon-to-be-released book.  Order now at a toasty oaky discount from a spoofilated web retailer.  Note the correct title.  And the Heloise type face.

I thought it was funny.  I really did.  I thought people would appreciate the dystopian view of both the alternative world and our own actual one.  Seems I was wrong.

While I deleted the emails without glancing at them, I did make the mistake of taking a call from a mutual friend (of Alice's and mine).  He was furious.  This is where I really got upbraided.  Plus chided, chastised and generally ripped a new one. 

As he sputtered at me after I'd answered the phone, I said, "Look, I love Alice.  She's great!  I was in one of my moods, OK, but you know what it's like when you're at Vinitaly.  Gogogogogo.  Everything is very concrete and specific.  You drown in a wine-dark sea of details.  You hunger for perspective.  And I've been reading a lot of SF anthologies of alternative histories and universes.  Plenty perspective.  It's quite stimulating, you know."

"First of all, you don't need perspective because you haven't gone to Vinitaly yet!  So you're full of shit.  Furthermore, how dare you equate her with those wine Nazis at WA, WS and all the rest of them?!  She's a real person with real feelings!  I think you've devastated her, you insensitive moron!"

"Wine Nazis?" I laughed, scarcely believing my ears.  "Are they as dangerous as the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld?  Or just as funny in some pathetic way?"  I let the insensitive moron part go.  Wasn't about to touch that one.

"What did Alice ever do to you to deserve such vile, disrespectful treatment?  She's a good person, and she knows way more about wine than you do, pal.  You aren't good enough to tie her shoes.  In the middle of a pig sty."

I tried to imagine why Alice, of all people, would even be in a pig sty.  I pressed on.  "She is and she does.  I already told you I think she's great too. But, you know, sometimes she can go a little overboard.  A little doctrinaire.  You know what I mean."

A pause.  He said a bit more calmly, "Oh I know.  But that's no reason to calumniate her on your stupid blog.  Think what people who might have wanted to read her book might say now.  'Oh, forget it, she sounds like a bitch.  An egomaniacal little dictatress.'  We already have Hillary Clinton and Bah Bush, for God's sake.  Enough already."

Dictatress!  How I love talking with PhD's.

"Well, one, in all fairness," I replied, "Alice has called herself the Wine Bitch.  That was then but, on the Net, then is always now.  And B, I thought it would be a fun way"  --  note that I never use fun as an adjective unless I'm being sarcastic -- "to gin up a little interest in the book.  The girl needs the money."  In fact I never thought of such a thing when I sat down to spin my 'armless fantasy.  Retrospectively and to save face, however, it seemed like a splendid idea to confess to such big-heartedness.

"You did this as a, as a guerrilla marketing attack?"  His tone suggested that my "guerrilla attack" was the moral equivalent of blowing up housewives at a Baghdad market.  "This is the limit!"

"Well.  Forgive me for trying to help her.  I wanted to leverage whatever I could to make people aware of the publication of Alice's long-awaited book.  Although I know my attempt carries no weight because I wasn't even nominated for a Wine Blog Association award.  But," I added with a nobly martyred tone, "I do what I can in my own inadequate little way." 

Oh God it felt good to be on the offensive again!

"Well...if you did it for Alice Feiring and her new book..."  My friend mulled.  "I'm still pissed at you.  But I suppose your heart was in the right place.  You meant well..."  He wasn't totally convinced.  He wanted to be, though.

"Completely, dude, and no spoofilation." 

I prayed that he wouldn't retort with something like, There's no such thing as NO spoofilation.  But he didn't. 

Vinitaly 2008

Next week at this time I'll be landing at Venice, bleary-eyed through customs and baggage claim, bleary-eyed driving to a B&B in the countryside near Verona.  Not a leg of the trip I'm looking forward to.

Next day -- let the madness begin.

Verona: the past needs to stay pretty

So many pavilions to go to, so many people to talk to, so many wines to taste, so many snarky articles to write...oh, what joy, what rapture, etc.

My dream -- of course this is my dream -- is to bump into the heroine of my fantasy about Count Visone and his counterfeit Brunello, the petite English lady with the alluring glinting glasses, Jancis Robinson.  (Sigh.)  Of course, blogging wretch that I am, I'll actually be hanging with others of my ilk, Jeremy Parzen, Giampero Nadali and Alfonso Cevola. 

One pavilion I didn't go to last year and must get to this: Sardinia. 

I am looking forward to going again to VinNatur, the extremely interesting biodynamic/natural wines fringe event at Villa Favorita near Vicenza. 

Here are a couple of photos from Vinitaly 2007.

And a couple from VinNatur 2007.  (See continuation)

The Counterfeiters

According to Patrick McGovern, author of Ancient Wine, wine has been traded internationally at least since the fourth millennium BC.  (See page 44.)  Centuries earlier many additives were used to flavor wine for a number of reasons: to impart medicinal properties sometimes, for example, but largely to prevent or mask spoilage.  Resin, myrrh, and honey were among a host of ingredients for this purpose. 

As sure as there is trade, there is fraud.  I have found a couple of punishments (London Lancet, 1868) meted out by medieval English magistrates.  "In 1364 a seller of unsound wine was punished by being made to drink it."  And: "An important proclamation against the adulteration and mixing of wines was issued by Henry the Fifth in 1419, and the punishment of the pillory was ordered for all who sold false wines."

Count Visone's wines are, no doubt, drinkable if not delicious once you get past the heavy doses of oak and overextraction, but "mixed" they are.

Let's say he's been found guilty of fraud by a German magistrate, who levies a big fine and prevents him from selling his wines in  Germany for a period of time.  And let's say Italian authorities have agreed to place the Count and fellow miscreants in the pillory all at once for some well-deserved public humiliation.  I wonder how this might play out...

Brunello scandal: My soothsaying abilities substantiated

The blind item I published recently, Skandal, was initially questioned by some as being old news, a recycling of last year's Italian wine scandal.  (Which one?)  It's been backed up by several folks close to the zone in question, if not the incident itself. 

More evil tidings come from Italy.  See the item from Franco Ziliani, whose story is personally affirmed by our very own Jeremy Parzen.  Big big names are involved and the whole dirty affair is about to blow wide open.  Or not....if the age-old client system, enduring Roman social construct, functions as well as it usually does.  In which case the whole dirty affair will be swept under one of Italy's very lumpy rugs.

The client system surrounding a patron would look out for its individuals. They would act as a kind of police, making sure no harm came to their own, that nothing was stolen from them. should one be struck down by poverty, the other clients, - and so too most likely the patron, - would see to it that one would get a loan, a daughter might be provided with a dowry, or at least the group would see to it that the deceased would get a decent funeral.
If the patron might not always provide help personally, it would most often be he who orchestrated it, perhaps asking other clients to help out one of his supporters who had fallen upon hard times. But the wealth of most patrons of course allowed him to hand out money to those they deemed deserving of such aid.
And so, maintaining guards, organizing any help, defending people in the courts, even openly handing out money, it is no wonder that the patrons were seen as protectors of their group.
It was for the purpose of representing their clients in court in was that most sons of high-ranking families were trained in law. And should matters fail and one struggle to get a retrial, then a patron might always call on some of his clients to stage demonstrations outside the courthouse, making their 'public' outrage heard over such 'miscarriages of justice'.

It remains to be said that the word patronus later became the Italian word padrino...  -- Roman Empire Net

                    _______________________________________________________________

Now, signore e signori, how is my soothsaying ability substantiated?   

Read on.  And read again even if you've read it...

Skandal! Ich liebe ein Skandal!

I have heard, through the immemorial grapevine, that a major scandal is brewing.  A German paper has published a small article that the carabinieri, Italy's charmingly compromised national police force, have uncovered a massive fraud in Brunello.  Seems that a lot -- a lot -- of Brunello producers have been caught palming off wine from Puglia as their own...wine that would have sold for pennies in Puglia suddenly commands many euros and many many many dollars as Brunello.

Does anybody in Montalcino area have more concrete info?

(Yes, I confess there is an element of Schadenfreude here...like Bears Stearns, so many of the hitherto mighty in Italy should have their day of reckoning.)

Da vedere anche:  http://tdh46.typepad.com/mondosapore/2008/03/brunello-scanda.html

Return to Montecucco

I'm in Grosseto now after a whirlwind 24 hours in the Montecucco zone of southern Tuscany.  I wrote about this emerging wine area in December (follow this link).  I tasted the producers' wines again and have some general thoughts about the strikingly distinct terroir of Montecucco vs. the better-known denominations of Tuscany.

First of all, these wines tend to be leaner than the well-publicized ones north of here in Chianti and in neighboring Montalcino.  The climate is very much harsher, the altitude higher, the sugars somewhat reduced.  Furthermore, the enologi of Schiaccionaia (Luca D'Attoma) and Piandibugnano (Paolo Trappolini) are leading both wineries in a similar direction, where the grapes and the land are allowed to express themselves without being smothered in oak or pumped up with excessive sugars and alcohol.

Secondly, there is a willingness to experiment with different grapes.  Aside from Sangiovese (which sometimes has difficulty reaching maturation here), producers have Aleatico, Syrah, Viognier, Vermentino and even Pinot Noir in their vineyards.  There are many more varieties represented.  While I'm all for using native grapes whenever feasible, I love a crisply dry, profumato Viognier when I find it -- especially in Tuscany, which is so short of interesting white wines.

No vines here. On the flank of Monte Amiata

Side note: much of the zone is too cold for either olives or grapes, so in effect this is a northern European wine area.  This and the diverse soils make for highly interesting and drinkable wines.  The Consorzio di Montecucco has a stand at Vinitaly, and it's worth stopping by to chat with the producers and try some of their best.

Also consider...

Pondering Basilicata and its Aglianico

March 14 - Maschito, PZ, Basilicata

Today we went to Basilicata, a drive of almost two hours from Venticano in Campania. I'd been looking forward to this jaunt because I'd never been to that little-visited region, and they have Aglianico del Vulture there.  The terroir and localized clones result in a very different wine from the big, powerful but ultimately suave Aglianicos of Campania.

The Basilicata I saw was at odds with the Basilicata I'd always read about.

Yes, Basilicata, way down there

The place is usually described in brief but dismissive terms.  Words like "bleak", "rugged," even "desert-like"  crop up often. Since the region was never a center of great urbanity, and since it isn't filled with "brand-name" art works, it's inevitable that the typical guidebooks would give it short shrift.  Although I must note that the highly urbane Horace, great poet of the early Empire, came from Venosa, a small town we drove through today.  Signs all over the town celebrate this.  Or not: a graffito on the outskirts proclaims, "Orazio era frocio!" (Horace was queer!)

Anyway, back to Basilicata as a whole.  I was impressed by the wide-open spaces and green hills, by the sparse population and the spare beauty of the few hilltop towns we saw.  The open-skyed, undulating plateau with its grain fields and pasturage called to mind large tracts of Anatolia.  Here and there were orchards of peach and cherry just now in flower, olive groves, vineyards, a gently vertical counterpoint to the horizontality of the endless green grasses. 

Abandoned stone houses, some of them a single room, stand here and there in the fields, expressive even now of the terrible isolation and poverty of previous generations.  Yet this countryside is carefully tended; hardly a hectare is without human attention.  A poignant landscape and a beautiful one.  The orchards and wildflowers are in bloom now, the young grasses fresh and green.

This Basilicata is no desert.  I'm sure when British guidebook writers venture here in July, they feel they've entered an alien zone that wars with a sensibility formed by walks in Devonshire and postcards of Chiantishire.  Granted, the summers are dry and hot, the grass does turn brown, and the landscape must seem dauntingly harsh.  It's really another example of how Italy is two countries.  I don't mean North and South; I mean a land of summer and a land of winter.  The differences can be as startling as the difference between summer and winter in, for example, the Great Lakes area.  The tourist brochure version of the country hasn't got much to do with the real place.

Parco eolico ("wind park"), known to us as a wind farm. Right now the landscape is as green as Ireland and often as devoid of trees as the Oulde Sod

(NB: This Old Sod is treeless.)

VISIT TO A WINERY

Fortunato Sebastiano took us to see the winery of the Musto-Carmelitano family.  It's in the town of Maschito [sounds like "mosquito", is said to derive from a Latin word meaning "place of male vines"], province of Potenza (PZ).  Led by the young Elisabetta, the tiny azienda has just begun to make its own wine.  Formerly the production went to the cantina sociale (growers' co-op).

At present the Musto-Carmelitano winery has only about 3 hectares (7 acres) under vine.  Like other farmers there, they also grow wheat, olives and several other cash crops.  In other words, they're real farmers, not well-heeled city folk who decided to have some fun with wine.  And there is no hint of a Tuscan monoculture (all vines all the time!) in this zone.

This winery's vineyards are, as so often, scattered round the area in small parcels.  Some of the vines are as old as 80-90 years, meaning they're at the end of their productive life, and some are "new" at 20 years.  Every grape grown in and around Maschito is Aglianico.  Further, their two single-vineyards wines display a strong individual character that reflects the soil, the vines' age and the exposition of each wine's materia prima (raw material).  As you might expect, the Musto-Carmelitanos' Aglianicos display a depth and an emerging complexity that bodes well for the future; the 2007 vintage, not yet bottled, is their first "serious" production.

The Musto-Carmelitanos use a modified form of the traditional alberello (bush) kind of vine-training -- so modified that it looks a lot like Guyot.  This helps further reduce the yields on plants that often produce few bunches of grapes due to age, which gives the fruit more concentrated juice and aromatic polyphenols in their thick skins.  The elevation (2000 feet) and large range of day-night temperatures also play their part in making fine grapes at the harvest in November.

Elisabetta makes three levels of Aglianico del Vulture.  The base red, Maschitano IGT, is, frankly, unworthy of the denomination and the other wines in her lineup.  Tellingly, Maschitano is made of purchased grapes.  I'm told that this wine has a local following because, as Fortunato told me, "the other base wines around here are so dreadful."  Even though I didn't think much of this one, I do admit that it's far better than some of the horrifying vino sfuso (bulk wine) I've been drinking lately. (When I'm paying for wine, trust me when I say I don't go all-out.)

The wines produced from Elisabetta's own grapes are another

Awaiting the busy winemaker

I'm sitting on a bench outside a hotel in Venticano, province of Avelllino. It's mild but a bit cloudy. I'm typing on the Blackberry because I have some time on my hands. Fortunato is running late. This is a rather stressful time for him, the last phase of his winemaking, ie, bottling. Fraught with weird problems that crop up when you think you've got them solved. Corking machine resists precise adjustment. Bottling line breaks down all of a sudden. Metal bands pop off the expensive new botti. Pain-in-the-ass stuff that can that can mess up your progress and even threaten the quality of your wine. It won't, of course, if you're skilled at crisis management, which winemakers seem to be. Even so, it casts your days in the flashing red light of "trouble, Will Robinson." Meanwhile, no crisis for me. I'm sitting in the now-glowing sun, basking in the bird-loud spring morning. Not a bit of stress here and now. That will be for later.

More great news for the US wine drinker: The dollar sustains head injuries

Yes, folks, the dollar continues its head-over-heels tumble down the stairs.  Here's the chart I got from x-rates.com:

The once-mighty dollar brought low: It cost about $1.54 today to buy a single euro.  It is no longer morning in America.  Say evening.  About 9 o'clock.  Here in the Abendland.

Fun fact: I got a brochure from Morrell Wine the other day.  After they finished touting the wines of plutocrats, they had a group called "Best buys for under $12.95".  A couple of years ago that would have been $9.95. 

As I digitate, the dollar cascades tonight in Asia.  The East is Red.  The West is a sick color green.  ("Oh, Rose, thou art Sick."  Mad sick.)

Executive summary: Be prepared to pay more for your Pinot Grigio, Yellowtail and Cotes du Rhone. 

Good news: The stuff'll still be cheaper than comparable quality vino from Californy.

It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, Lola.

Gambero Rosso Report NYC '08: The East Is Red

My special correspondent, Lisa Qiu (also feted recently as Official Mondosapore Groupie), stormed the Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri event in on Park Avenue yesterday, with photographer Robin Hwang in tow. 

To refresh your memory, the big Italian wine guide awards 3 glasses (bicchieri) for wines it deems especially good; the 3 glasses refers to the fact that, when two friends sit down with a bottle of vino, if it's OK they drink one glass apiece; if it's good they drink 2 glasses; and if it's REALLY good they drink 3 glasses, which is to say the whole bottle.

Such calculations do not reflect an Anglo-Celtic sensibility.

We'll leave aside the many dark murmurings about the GR tasting panel and precisely how they arrive at their ever more generous judgments.  I will say that, as usual, red wines vastly outnumber whites in the winners circle.  Whether or not this lopsided division accurately reflects current realities of quality and value in Italy, I can't say for sure.  I will say that, as China and other Asian markets become more important to the Italians, the predominance of reds will only increase.

Here is Lisa's report, enhanced by Robin's pix.

Rare white wine sighting

A pour-us line

Fact:
Half of all Italian men are Stanley Tucci

Special Correspondent at the Gambero Rosso Tasting in New York

Lisa Qiu, my beloved and devoted groupie, will be covering the GR Tre Bicchieri event for this esteemed blog on March 3. 

Lisa is a journalism major at NYU, so this is a big step in her nascent career.  Let's see how she handles the pressure -- deadline, fact-checking, maintaining Objectivity in the face of much crass hucksterism, not to mention the beguilements of many handsome Italians.  But she is wise for one so young.  She will meet the challenge head on and with aplomb.  By the way, one of the great things about having a blog is getting away with "aplomb" and "beguilements" and using too many adjectives.  Don't let that go to your head, Lisa Qiu.

Lisa had the photo taken last year in China.  It's nice to see how Maoist worker's clothes have evolved.

Download david_bowie_china_girl.mp3

The Young Ones

This is no country for old men.  -- W. B. Yeats

Not any more it isn't.

Lately I've been struck by the extreme youth of winemakers (enologi) that I've met in Italy.  Energetic guys in their early-mid 30s and even their 20s, completely immersed in the life of the winery or wineries they work for.  Experimenting, taking on and discarding the results of those experiments, always seeking to improve the wines, express their territory better and, not coincidentally, make the wines more sellable.  (A shock to romantics everywhere: it's a business, stupid.)

Photo above: Gianluca Scaglione, boy enologo at Pianbello

The final product may vary in its quality or, shall we say, market-pleasingness, but the dynamism of these kids' approach bodes well for the future. One reason I say this, to generalize a little longer, is to contrast the wines of an established personage like Riccardo Cotarella with those of the Young Ones like Bruno Tamagnone of Cascina Gilli or Gianluca Scaglione of Pianbello, two small wineries in Piemonte.

Bruno Tamagnone and boss in background.  Bruno is how old??

Last April I attended a dinner at the stunning Villa Avredi near Verona in honor of Cotarella.  We were served bottle after bottle of Cotarella's wines from all over Italy.  My dinner companion, Danielle Pollack, and I looked at each other after a while.  She had a look on her face that telegraphed exactly what she was going to say.  "Well.  What do you think?"  she asked.

"I think they all are good..."

"And they all taste exactly the same."  We turned around the bottles and found a Nero d'Avola and a Chianti or Brunello and something from Piemonte.  Who could have told otherwise?

Contrast a tasting of the wines made under the guidance of these young winemakers.

Chiara Martinotti of Cascina Gilli told me that these out-of-place palms were the rage a century ago.  "To bring some exoticism to the inland territories."

Another Friulian winemaker speaks up

God knows, I'm not one to cause trouble or fan the flames of controversy.  However.  Whenever anyone becomes the center of a cult -- of personality or winemaking or anything else -- my built-in bullshit-o-meter goes crazy.

By the way, I will provide an ad hoc definition of cult: uncritical acceptance of someone's song and dance.  Which seems to me the essence of Gravner's reception in this country.

I have been emailing back and forth with a winemaker in Friuli, Michele Ciani, who runs a family winery called Aquila del Torre.  To get another viewpoint, on the ground, I asked him for his thoughts and opinions on the cult winemaker Josko Gravner.  Michele's comments are perhaps more measured than Mario Zanusso's but still critical.  And they add an interesting new wrinkle or two to the brouhaha.

I am translating from Michele's well-considered email to me.  The original is included to assure you that I'm not taking undue liberties or slanting Michele's comments. 

I owe you these articles, dear readers

Four days without an Internet connection -- it's agony, folks.  Try it, I dare you.  The Blackberry is a godsend, but it's pretty hard to compose long and witty posts with your thumbs.  You get your emails, check the NYT and site traffic (this is key).  But the comfort and format to compose a brilliant post, ah no.  So.  Aside from lots of pictures of various Italian landscapes and winemakers, I will settle down at home and write some articles on interesting people and wines and places, including:

* Ferdinando and Mario Zanusso of I Clivi.  You can see Slovenia from there!  But there's more than that to recommend their long-lived vini naturali.  Plus their comments on "oenologists." 

* Pietro Cirio of Pianbello.  Question: If you like Berlusconi, does that make you a bad person?  A bad winemaker?  It's a complicated world.

* Gianni Vergnano of Cascina Gilli, Freisameister. 

* Profile of an American wine importer.  Funny.  But funny ha-ha or funny hhmmm?  You caucus.  You decide.  It's what we call democracy.

And so much more.  It's what we call Plenitude.

In-depth tour of Slovenia

I am excited to tell you that I went to Slovenia!  Yesterday, for all of 30 minutes, with Mario Zanusso of I Clivi, when he went to buy gas.  I'm ready to write the definitive American travel guide on that exotic country.

It was entering another world.  One minute you're in Italy, the next -- through a now-deserted border station that looks like a beer drive-thru outside an Indian reservation -- you're getting gas for 20% cheaper in a country where they speak a language full of diacritical marks!  It's like having ants on your tongue!

Slovenia's like Friuli, really, only sort of run down.

 

It's a wine wonderland.  Their vineyards are full of international varieties.  They use quaint training methods for their vines.  I heard that some winemakers not only use ancient-style amphorae to vinify and store their wines, the most innovative among them are beginning to use the tin bathtubs of their forefathers (a prized possession of the rich), rain barrels and shallow ponds to lend the wine ever-greater naturalness and authenticity.  It's a dizzying mixture of worlds, Old and New, of eras, Modern and Prehistoric, and of orientations, International and Village, that promises stunning new oenological developments.  They use the euro too.  Slovenia has it all.

I took pictures of this amazing place, staying ahead of the Secret Police every step of the way, but of course I forgot the cable that would enable me to download them.  Alas, you will have to wait a long time to see them, possibly till next Monday.

Slovenia from I Clivi

 

Re: Italian wine tours

It's a joy to have a good Internet connection.  We're in Milano and I'm killing time till we go out to dinner.  There's a lot of noise outside -- sounds like drunken sports fans -- and a fair amount of traffic noise, raised from the mundane by the clang-clang-clang of the trolley bells every now and then.  A lot like being at home, overlooking First Avenue, just at a lower floor.

With this time to think about the places we've been, the people we've met and the wines we've drunk, it's inevitable that a recessively introspective person like myself deconstruct and analyse my experiences.  If you have a similarly boring nature, do read on.

My first observation, which will lead to an anecdotally supported generalization, is that Italians are really quite provincial.  Which is surprising given their geography and their proximity to a slew of other languages and cultures.  When you get out there, you'd better speak Italian.  Even many of the people who are assigned to escort you around speak English in a very broken way or not at all. 

"Ha!  Are you Americans any less provincial?  Do you speak a lot of languages?"  No and no.  But in the wine world, no one in Virginia is betting their life on exports to Italy or anywhere else. And you can always find a Panera or someplace like that for Wi-Fi access in the States, which is highly unusual in Italy. 

Their image of America and its people is full of contradictions, of course.  The USA is stupendous, exciting, great, especially New York and San Francisco.  It's also a hellhole of racism and poverty, we are imperialist destroyers of innocent indigenous cultures and, worst of all, we Americans don't know shit about living or eating well.  We all eat frozen dinners at 6 and drink cappuccino into the evening.  We are uncouth and hopelessly naive in the ways of the world.

I think that's quite wrong, even if the electorate has plenty of members who believe in the Literal Word of God.  (News flash: It's OK to stone cheating wives and daughters to death!  However, James Dobson is still debating how literally we should take the food proscriptions of Leviticus.  I'll get word to you when I read it in Grit.)

Another striking thing is that while many wine folk here portray themselves as simple farmers (contadini) and -- of course, this is pretty much de rigueur wherever you go in the world entire -- defenders of the terroir and ancient wine-making tradition, they drive around in expensive cars and live in rather large villas.  Most of their fellow Italians are driving something a lot smaller and cheaper and more beat up and they live in cramped apartments.  These guys are doing all right.  Better off than some other people I could name.  (Hint: Me.)

Well, I should shut up before I foment an international incident -- I mean between Arkansas and New York -- so I bid you all a fond adieu.

 

From the province of Asti

February 6 -- Canelli, province of Asti

I've often made fun of the Italians and their odd attachment to big woolly mufflers tied tight around their necks even in rather mild weather.  I have a new respect for them -- or at least their grandparents and great-grandparents from the countryside of 50-60-70 years ago.

Wait -- let me frame this differently.

You know all the hill towns that characterize just about every part of Italy?  With the picturesque bell towers and castles and so forth? 

Did you ever stop to think that, until maybe 50 years ago, most of their inhabitants spent a great deal of their time and energy climbing up and down all those damnable hills?  For everything they needed, to and from the fields.  To and from market and school.  The post office.  The train station, where there was one, invariably situated at some low point in the valley. To work, to learn, to get away from the shrieking mother and the muttering father.  From the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the ewes.  From the prying eye of the parish priest.  Etc., etc.

No wonder everybody was so skinny in those neorealist movies.  They were starving AND they were fit!

On the continuation page you'll have some photographic evidence of this, which was assiduously gathered in mud and melting snow on a glorious day.  Or you will have when I get home.  I seem to have forgotten my camera's USB cord. Of course.  Sorry.

The tour was courtesy of Pietro Cirio of the Pianbello winery, Loazzolo, a minute hamlet in a predominantly white-wine zone of Asti province -- still white wines, not spumante, although the Gancia family's HQ is in the nearby town of Canelli. 

By the way, Loazzolo is an almost empty but exceedingly well-maintained place perched safely on a hill.  It's a heartbreakingly beautiful spot where each year another house or two becomes vacant as the old people die off.  The place is so inconvenient for modern living that they have a hard time convincing even the Germans to come and buy the houses for summer use.  After all, who wants to drive 25 kilometers for bread and milk, or farther to rent a DVD to while away another dismal winter evening?

We may deplore this worldwide trend,  But chances are that you, like me, escaped from a small town a long time ago, and for the same mix of economic, social and convenience factors.

Beauty from afar -- that's what you such places have to offer us.  A place that may grace the cover of a travel or wine-lifestyle magazine, or a calendar you pay 15 euros for at the Rialto Bridge in Venice.  But live there?  Can you imagine?  Sadly but honestly...

Deserted houses at Loazzolo.

Sasa tasting dinner at etcetera etcetera

Enough political tomfoolery.  Back to what matters.  Wine. 

Terry Hughes l'opinionista shot his week's wad on this post, now has only the time and energy to report the facts, ma'am, just the facts.  Well, OK, some 'tude will show forth.  Don't it always.

Tony Sasa, a sort of promotional/sales agent for a group of wineries in various parts of Italy as well as proprietor of an enoteca in Florence, hosted a private tasting dinner at etcetera etcetera last night.  Funny how things go full circle; two years ago this month, at the very same restaurant, I first met Tony, enologo Paolo Caciorgna and producer Andrea Mantengoli of La Serena, an estate in Montalcino.  I had met Giorgio Boeri, a Barbera d'Asti producer, at Vinitaly.    He was there last night, energetically pouring and explaining his wines to anyone who spoke a little Italian.

I'm not sure where the energy came from.  These folks were plumb tuckered out, having just come from the West Coast, where they did tasting dinners in Seattle, LA, Dallas, and then they had just flown in from Boston -- I may be omitting something else -- and have DC and Baltimore still to go.  All in about a week.  A most un-Italian pace.

Before I go a little into the wines and producers, let me tell you I was fairly surprised by the types of people who forked over the bread to attend the event.  For one thing, they skewed quite young, 20s and 30s, not so much the typical 40s to 60s.  And there was a rather high proportion of women -- women who came with gal pals not boyfriends or husbands.  OK, there were all types in this gathering of 40-something people.  It's the distribution of them that was surprising to me.  I think it augurs well for the long-term interest in and consumption of Italian wine.

Tre Bicchieri 2008 in New York

A lot of people have been searching for the basic info on the event, but oddly Google directs them to an older post.  Here is the link to the recent post on the bare facts of the Gambero Rosso do at the Puck Building.  Hope this works. 

Meanwhile, a little visual Muzak.

View from Filippo Ronco's terrace

Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri 2008, New York Edition

In case you were wondering...Gambero Rosso will hold its annual scratch my back and I'll scratch yours festa in our fair city.

When: Monday, March 3.  The press get to enter about 1 PM, the trade at 2, the great unwashed at 3. 

Where: Puck Building, 295 Lafayette Street, corner of Houston.

Tre Bicchieri New York Update

The location of Gambero Rosso's tasting on March 3rd has been changed to 583 Park Avenue.

What: Tasting of all the Tre Bicchieri (three glasses) honorees according to Gambero Rosso. 

Who:  Everyone and his brother.  The wines keep getting so much better every year, see.

The location of Gambero Rosso's tasting on March 3rd has been changed to 583 Park Avenue.